Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 170
April 5, 2017
America is ‘over-stored’ and Payless ShoeSource is the latest victim
Payless ShoeSource became the latest major retailer to declare financial distress when, on Tuesday, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced a restructuring plan that includes the immediate closure of 400 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico.
Further closures are possible as the company works “to aggressively manage the remaining real estate lease portfolio.”
Meanwhile, Payless said in a statement it will reduce its debt load by almost half and increase its presence in the e-commerce space.
“This is a difficult, but necessary, decision driven by the continued challenges of the retail environment, which will only intensify,” Payless chief executive W. Paul Jones said in a statement. “We will build a stronger Payless for our customers, vendors and suppliers, associates, business partners and other stakeholders through this process.”
The shoe store was founded in Topeka, Kan., in 1956 during the postwar boom and eventually expanded to about 4,400 locations in more than 30 countries. The company, which focuses on “everyday and special occasion shoes … at affordable prices,” bills itself as the “largest specialty family footwear retailer in the Western Hemisphere.”
Recently, though, the footgear empire has struggled. According to Moody’s, Payless’s revenue fell 4 percent from October 2015 to October 2016.
Celebrities such as Tyra Banks, Sam Worthington and, for a time, Star Jones wore and hawked the company’s low-cost footwear, but such endorsements proved no match for market pressures that have affected many major retail giants that once seemed indomitable.
During the first three months of 2017, nine major retailers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, CNBC reported, which “puts the industry on pace for the highest number of such filings since 2009, when 18 retailers resorted to that action.”
Moody’s, last month, listed 19 retailers as financially distressed, including Sears, J. Crew and Gymboree. Macy’s, J.C. Penney, RadioShack and The Limited are just a few of the companies that have announced closures this year.
“It’s been a downward spiral for traditional retailers,” Christian Magoon, CEO of Amplify ETFs, told CNN Money.
The rise of Amazon and online shopping are often cited as a cause for the troubles of brick and mortar retailers. (Amazon founder Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
“The model of online retailers is winning out,” Magoon said. “They are more competitive on pricing, they have better selection, and their convenience level is quite high.”
It doesn’t help, as Urban Outfitters CEO Richard Hayne pointed out, that compared to the housing market, the retail market is oversaturated.
“Retail square feet per capita in the United States is more than six times that of Europe or Japan. And this doesn’t count digital commerce,” Hayne said. “Our industry, not unlike the housing industry, saw too much square footage capacity added in the 1990s and early 2000s. Thousands of new doors opened and rents soared. This created a bubble, and like housing, that bubble has now burst.”
Source:
Top Fashion Agency Jed Root Closes Doors
Top artist management agency Jed Root Inc. is closing its doors, leaving scores of artists and agents around the world struggling to secure unpaid fees and salaries. Jed Root Inc. was an internationally acclaimed fashion agency which represented a broad spectrum of creative professionals including photographers, makeup artists, hair stylists, illustrators, and set designers on top-level international fashion campaigns and editorials.
Internal reports claim the company has been unable to pay invoices to artists and vendors, racking up millions in unpaid bills. The esteemed agency began in New York City in 1989 by Jed Root had been acquired by Swiss company RPRT AG in 2015 but their management and capital were not enough to continue operations past March 31 of this year.
Home to an award-winning roster of artists like photographers Michael Thompson, Anthony Maule, Adam Katz Sinding, Emma Tempest, and Takay along with makeup artists and fashion stylists in four cities, Jed Root artists have contributed to luxury label campaigns from Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, and Uniqlo and editorials for international editions of Vogue, Numero, Elle, and GQ, among others. Jed Root Inc. had offices in New York, Paris, and Los Angeles. The agency had just moved into smaller offices in New York’s Union Square when employees were let go.
Source:
https://fstoppers.com/business/top-fashion-agency-jed-root-closes-doors-171855
Consumers have a new attitude about fashion — and it should terrify H&M, Forever 21, and Zara
Renting isn’t just for your prom clothes anymore.
Chic startups like Rent the Runway and The Black Tux have completely changed the rental game, offering high-end tuxedos and dresses to rent for a set period of time.
Customers have flocked to the startups’ offerings. Rent the Runway reached its annual goal of $100 million in sales last November, according to Forbes. As of January, The Black Tux was doing $2 million in sales a month with a two-fold increase year over year.
It seems that shoppers are increasingly seeing renting as a good opportunity to step outside of their normal style, or to obtain a fancy garment for an upcoming event.
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Now department stores, looking for a way to draw in a younger crowd who is more likely to be interested in renting, are partnering with these brands to offer more options to shoppers. In November, Neiman Marcus made a deal with Rent the Runway for a store-within-a-store concept in San Francisco. The Black Tux recently began a trial partnership that calls for the creation of rental locations within six Nordstrom stores around the country.
It’s the first rental partnership for both stores, which are hoping that before and after appointments, shoppers will browse the aisles and walk out with more products than just a rental. The rental companies, on the other hand, are just happy to be associated with well-known, established, and trusted brands that have more locations to service potential customers.
“We’re a purchase people are making for a very important day. We need as much trust as we can possibly get,” Andrew Blackmon, cofounder of The Black Tux, told Business Insider.
Though it may seem that these rental outposts in Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus could potentially steal sales from the department stores’ existing offerings, the startups don’t think that will be the case.
“It’s a totally different market,” Blackmon said. “The price points for [Nordstrom’s] tuxedos are fairly high, so there isn’t really any cannibalization.”
A typical Nordstrom tuxedo carries a price tag of at least $800, while the store’s private label sells one for $430. Compare that to The Black Tux, where an average tuxedo rental will cost you $125.
Blackmon said he sees his competitors as other suiting companies that sell their suits in the $150 to $300 range — firmly fast-fashion territory. “A lot of people are using us after having an experience there,” Blackmon said.
Rent the Runway founder Jennifer Hyman told Forbes that she has also seen her customers move away from fast fashion and turn to renting from her company, often supplementing those rentals with buying investment pieces.
“Rent-buy is the new high-low,” Hyman told Forbes, noting that a customer may buy a black dress but rent a hot pink one for a special event.
Fast fashion, which is clothing made and sold cheaply with a condensed supply chain so that it can capture current trends, used to be considered the “low” end of that equation. Since it’s only in style for a season or two at best, fast fashion is often seen as quickly disposable and only worn a few times before being discarded.
It’s being pushed out by rental in these formal categories, however, as the prices are similar, but the quality and perceived quality is miles apart. And if customers are only going to wear the garment once anyway, it makes a lot of sense to rent something that looks and feels better. Plus, the company will take care of dry cleaning.
Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/rental-companies-are-growing-and-fast-fashion-should-be-scared-2017-3
Alkaline water without having to leave your house
“Drinking enough water isn’t really enough,” Mike Wingenbach said. “You have to drink the right kind of water. Water that will help buffer acid, remove toxins and is easily absorbed by your body.” As an independent retailer of one of the best home alkaline water systems on the market, Wingenbach knows a thing or two about the benefits of having alkaline water in your home.
LivingWater is a countertop unit that hooks up to your faucet, providing acid-buffering alkaline water for drinking and cooking right in your kitchen. The acidic water is also good for cleaning without chemicals and watering plants.
So what exactly does drinking alkaline water do for your body? “When you drink alkaline water regularly, you’re helping your body to hydrate itself as well as flush out toxins and waste products,” Wingenbach said. “If you’re trying to lose weight, you may get a boost there as well. Overall, there’s no better way to help stay healthy.”
The unit works by using two filters. “The first filter is a carbon and sediment filter, which removes unpleasant tastes and odors,” Wingenbach said. “The second filter is a carbon and food grade calcium sulfite filter to ensure proper mineralization of the water using good calcium.”
The LivingWater unit is easy to install to your existing faucet and doesn’t require any special plumbing. “Having a LivingWater is like owning a limitless supply of alkaline, ionized, healthy water,” Wingenbach said. “You get pH-balancing, healthy alkaline water for drinking and cooking, strong alkaline water for washing vegetables, and acidic water for cleaning.” LivingWater has eight different pH levels, ranging from 4.0 acidic water to 10.0 alkaline water.
“I see a lot of interest in alkaline water locally,” Wingenbach said. “I see people lugging around and filling up 5-gallon jugs at the local water depots. With the LivingWater, you make an initial investment but it will end up paying for itself after a few years. And you don’t have to leave your house to get the best tasting and healthiest water available.”
Wingenbach is a believer because he has had his own LivingWater machine for nearly seven years. “All you need to do is replace the filters once a year,” he said of the maintenance required. The filters are easy to remove and can be replaced with a simple twist and lock design. “The LivingWater can last 10 years. I personally am so glad I made the investment. I really think I feel better today than I did 25 years ago.”
He believes so much in the product that he has a proposition for buyers. “I will assist in setting up the living water machine,” Wingenbach said. “Try it for 10 days and see for yourself. If you decide it’s not for you, you can return the machine for a full refund, no questions asked. There is zero risk to you. “
The LivingWater retails for $2,199.00, and comes without any worry about complicated or intense maintenance. “LivingWater is designed for easy maintenance,” Wingenbach said. “It has an automatic cleaning cycle every 12 minutes of use.” The unit also comes with a five-year limited warranty.
Now through April 30, 2017 Wingenbach is offering readers of The Coast News $100 off the price of the unit as well as free maintenance for one year, free shipping, a replacement filter set and a complete cleaning kit.
For more information, visit Lifestylefocusenterprise.net or call Mike Wingenbach at (760) 612-1667.
April 4, 2017
Amazon Wants to Dress You
In 2012, on the first Monday in May, Jeff Bezos stepped onto the red carpet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for the annual Costume Institute gala — the fashion world’s biggest, best, most exclusive event — wearing a black Tom Ford tuxedo with a white pocket square and patent leather shoes.
The Amazon founder was dressed to impress. His company had sponsored the blockbuster evening, along with that year’s accompanying exhibit, “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations.” As honorary chairman of the gala, Bezos was stationed at the top of the museum’s stairs, greeting industry celebrities and actual celebrities alike alongside Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, designer Miuccia Prada, and actress Carey Mulligan.
Bezos was dogged about allying his e-commerce juggernaut with the fashion community, and his efforts didn’t just pertain to philanthropy. Leading up to the Met Gala, the tight-lipped CEO told the New York Times that Amazon was making a “significant” investment in fashion. Though Amazon had previously acquired a few fashion e-commerce companies, Bezos was now keen on building a dedicated fashion hub on its own flagship site. The hub, to be known as Amazon Fashion, would have a special landing page to direct shoppers to clothing and accessories and promote Amazon partnerships with fashion brands; it would also have its own merchandising and editorial teams.
In anticipation, Bezos hired Cathy Beaudoin, a Gap executive who started the now-defunct shoe site Piperlime, to head up the project known as Amazon Fashion; Julie Gilhart, a former fashion director at Barneys, was brought on as a consultant. Amazon convinced designers like Michael Kors, Vivienne Westwood, and Tracy Reese to sell their products on Amazon Fashion, and the company was in the process of building a40,000-square-foot photo studio in Brooklyn where it could shoot original photography for the site.
But even with all these efforts — and the Tom Ford tux — Bezos was decidedly out of his element at the Met. While he told model Elettra Wiedemann, who hosted the event’s very first (and last) livestream, that Amazon “really wanted to participate in this gala as a way of showing our commitment to this industry,” he had also admitted to Bloomberg earlier that morning that “before we got involved, this event wasn’t on my radar at all.”
A photo of Bezos looking bored, with his bowtie slightly askew, surfaced on Vogue and eventually hit tech blogs, where he wasteased for not being able to fake his interest in fashion for very long, even if he was dining next to Scarlett Johansson and Mick Jagger.
Five years later, Bezos and Amazon have not backed off their aggressive pursuit of fashion. Since 2015, the company has sponsored New York Fashion Week: Men’s. Last year, it premiered a 30-minute HSN-style shopping show called Style Code Live that airs live every weeknight on Amazon.com and picked up The Fashion Fund, the documentary-style show about the process behind the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund competition that previously ran on Ovation TV, and Hulu before that. These days it’s also sponsoring international fashion weeks, notably in India and Japan.
Plenty of brands have entered into official partnerships with Amazon since the Met Gala, too. There are now dozens of premium fashion labels selling their wares directly on the site, includingStuart Weitzman, Kate Spade, Rebecca Taylor, Milly, Frye, Marc Jacobs, Gucci, and Ferragamo.(Hundreds more brands are sold by third-party sellers via Amazon’s massive free-for-all marketplace.) Even Gap CEO Art Peck told investors he was open to wholesaling to Amazon — an unusual move for the once-dominant company.
With its newly robust list of brands, Amazon seems to be making good on what Beaudoin told the Seattle Times back in 2013: “We want to be a great department store, like Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, and Saks.” It’s worth noting that while Amazon is on the upswing, those great department stores are in serious trouble.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, department store sales shrunk from $67.56 billion in 2011 to $60.65 billion in 2015; meanwhile, Amazon’s clothing and accessories sales nearly quadrupled from $4.3 billion to $16.4 billion during that same period. Macy’s is currently the largest fashion retailer in the country, but according to finance firm Cowen & Co., Amazon will soon replace it, with a projected $28 billion in apparel sales this year.
So yes, when it comes to Amazon’s fashion ambitions, this is just the beginning.
Source:
http://www.racked.com/2017/4/4/14982426/amazon-fashion-clothes
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Just Announced Hundreds of Open Positions
If you simply walked past SpaceX’s headquarters, you may not realize that Elon Musk’s space travel project is looking for more staff — the futuristic company is way too cool to display an archaic “Help Wanted” sign out front. Those of you who do your job searches digitally, however, will find a wide array of job openings across 41 departments on the company’s careers website.
SpaceX is looking to fill a whopping 473 open positions at posts around the United States. A great majority, 313, of these positions are at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Other locations include posts on both coasts of the U.S., as well as in Texas and Washington D.C.
The jobs run the gamut of experience, from highly skilled engineering positions that require advanced degrees in astronautics, mechanical engineering, or physics to experienced line cooks looking to feed the bodies that hold the brains of rocket scientists. According to Business Insider, “About half of the positions call for engineers, 33% for technicians, 5% for machinists, 5% for specialists, 5% for managers, and 1% for directors,” so there are a lot of ways to play a part in the future of space travel.
BUSINESS IS BOOMING
It’s no wonder that SpaceX is currently looking to ramp up operations. Late last week the company made history by being the first to launch a mission into space using reusable rocket parts.
This achievement is going to revolutionize the way we get to space, and we will likely see a boost across the entire space travel sector as a result of it. In addition to keeping those already involved with SpaceX inspired, this recent success should motivate competitors like Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic to up their own games.
Now that reusing rocket parts is a proven concept, we should see a greater push to get technology and even humans up into space. These rockets will save considerable money, allowing space tourists, companies, and other entities greater access to that final frontier.
Source:
https://futurism.com/elon-musks-spacex-just-announced-hundreds-of-open-positions/
April 3, 2017
Print out a sweater with Kniterate, a 3D printer for knitting
3D printing is great if you need to create something made of plastic or even metal or ceramic out of thin air. But what if you want something fuzzier and warmer? Something, like say, a hand-knit scarf or sweater?
Enter Kniterate, a “digital knitting machine,” that makes it easy to take digital designs and automatically knit them into wearable fabrics at the push of a button. Simpler designs like scarves and ties can be knitted wholly by the Kniterate, while more complex pieces like dresses or sweaters will require a bit of assembly after the machine has done its work. The company is also developing an app to make it easy to design new patterns, add images and text, and customize the type of stitches used.
According to the Kickstarter page, Kniterate hopes to bridge the gap between traditional home knitting machines (apparently a thing that’s been around since the ‘80s — who knew?), which are cheaper but complicated and tricky to use, and more expensive industrial machines. That said, a single Kniterate costs $4,699 on Kickstarter, with only 125 units being offering through crowdfunding. And if you miss that, you’ll be stuck paying $7,499 at retail, which certainly stretches the price point for “consumer” a bit.
Obviously, given the price and the fact that Kniterate is an extremely complex piece of hardware and software from a first time company, it’s worth doing your own research before putting up the cash. The first Kniterate units are expected to ship in April 2018.
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I was a multi-millionaire by 27—here’s what I learned
In the early 2000s, I was an early employee at a Silicon Valley technology company that designs and markets cutting-edge computer processing chips. When I started, there were a few dozen other people. When I left, there were thousands. I was a computer processor engineer, architect, and manager. The company is now one of the largest and most successful in the world.
I made some number of million dollars. I never really figured out exactly how much it was. I think it might have been around $5 million. I know that my adjusted gross income in at least one year was about $1.5 million. I was making at least $500,000 per year.
Some people say that “money doesn’t make you happy,” yet they continue striving to be more wealthy in the hope of becoming more happy. It’s one thing to say it or think it, and it’s another thing altogether to experience it.
Money doesn’t make you happy, and it doesn’t make you content either. I remember getting to the end of a particularly challenging but satisfying project, putting my feet up on my desk, taking a deep breath, and realizing that I had it all.
I had the fancy million-dollar house in Mountain View (where Google is based). I had a small mortgage on that house, but I could have paid that off any time I wanted. I had a house in another country that I owned outright. I had the luxury cars that I purchased with cash. I had the attractive wife at home. I was highly respected where I worked. I had freedom to work on whatever I chose. I had a very high salary, lucrative stock options, and more money than I knew what to do with.
But I felt anxious and dissatisfied. On some level, my striving for success had been driven by a belief that my deep suffering would go away when I had enough wealth. I learned first-hand that once our basic needs are taken care of, the level of contentment and happiness we experience has nothing to do with how much wealth we have.
In fact, wealth can actually make life worse. We can use wealth to distract us from our deeper issues by spending money on things we don’t need, or worrying about losing our wealth. Life might also get a lot more complicated with wealth.
I have become aware that I tend to worry about not having enough money in the future, and that this fear has been with me all of my life. It is not correlated with my net equity or my net cash-flow.
You can only help people to help themselves
Instead of buying a holiday home at Lake Tahoe or a some investment properties, I purchased a house in another country for some members of my extended family to live in. I let them live there without paying rent for a few years. I was essentially giving them tens of thousands of dollars per year from my own pocket.
I later found out that these people resented me for doing this. They felt that I was treating them like children and claimed that I had not included them in the process of choosing and buying the house. They claimed that I had caused them to lose the favorable tenancy for a much smaller house that they had with their previous landlord. They claimed that they didn’t like the house that I had bought.
Financially, I lost not only the rent for that house, but enormous amounts of money in currency exchanges, in buying and selling fees, and in having a very low return on investment. The whole process consumed much of my time and energy over an extended period time.
I used to believe that people were inherently reasonable and good. This process taught me that I should not assume that people can be relied upon, or that other people will necessarily receive from me in the same way that I receive from others.
I learned another big lesson from this. I now never help people who don’t ask me for help, and even then I only help them to the extent that they ask. I also look for ways that I can help that don’t compromise my own position, and that require the least outlay of my money, time, and effort.
There will always be someone richer than you
If you equate your worth to how much stuff you have, then you will always be noticing people who have more than you, and you will always be feeling that you don’t measure-up.
If you suffer from this, you’re not going to get to some magical level of net worth and finally realize that you are valuable. In fact, the problem is going to just get worse. I bought a bigger, fancier house in Mountain View, mostly because I didn’t think that my house in Santa Clara was fancy enough. I couldn’t, at that time, buy the level of fanciness that some of my friends could. When I moved to Mountain View, one couple I knew moved from Palo Alto—which is already nicer than Mountain View—to Los Altos Hills, which is super-fancy.
The trick is to figure out how much money you actually need and want in order to get your pragmatic needs met. How much money do you need to live a reasonable lifestyle? Optionally, you could also work out how much wealth you need to accumulate in order to become financially independent while living your chosen lifestyle.
It’s also important to heal the wound that makes you strive to feel valuable based on what you have. I believed that I was fundamentally worthless. Through a process of psychotherapy, coaching, authentic friendships, and healing intimate relationships, I came to understand that I have a rich intrinsic value. Others enjoy me just for my essence, and I learned how to internalize that so that now I can enjoy myself just for my essence also.
Luxury is an addictive drug
The frugal blogger Mr. Money Mustache tells us that luxury is weakness. Luxury is an addictive drug. Until we understand this, it has the power to ruin our lives.
I remember driving my brand new luxury sports car and noticing that my identity was becoming tied up with the car. I realized that this super-expensive car would wear out and then I would need to buy another one. To keep my identity, I would need to keep generating a lot of money. It was like having a drug habit. The car didn’t make me feel that good, but the idea of not having the car felt lame. So I realized that I would need to keep having that fix to feel normal.
This process of getting the drug to get back to normal is a common experience for drug addicts. Also, tolerance to the drug increases with abuse over time. An amount of the drug that was once satisfying starts to not have the desired effect. We find that we need more and more of the substance or experience to get back to normal.
The problem is that, as the U2 lyric goes, “You can never get enough of what you don’t really need.” Once you have the Porsche Cayenne Turbo, you start wishing for a Bentley Bentayga. The more luxury you have, the more luxury you need, but luxury never really satisfies the itch that it promises to scratch.
Source:
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/28/i-was-a-multi-millionaire-by-27-heres-what-i-learned.html
Industry Trends Every Fashion Designer Should Know
Design is a challenging profession, and most designers learn early on in their careers that there are two ways to do it. Some choose to take the entrepreneurial route and launch their own brand, electing to deal with the challenges of production, marketing, and eCommerce. Others decide to leverage the resources of big box brands and design strictly for another company, which often limits their creative control and scope. But, there are new trends in the industry that are beginning to blur the line between the role of designer and entrepreneur.
eCommerce is on the rise worldwide, and because the middle class is growing globally, online retailers can expect significant growth in the coming years. A recent study found that online sales increased by 7.5 percent between June 2015 and June 2016. That kind of growth indicates a shift in consumer thinking, something ideal for smaller brands. If a retail business can operate without opening a brick-and-mortar location, designers who have a product but lack the capital to purchase coveted shelf space have the chance to compete.
Here are four industry trends that will help designers who want to go the entrepreneurial route:
1. Designer empowerment
While online growth gives designers options for eCommerce, it does not necessarily solve all of the other problems that come with starting a brand. For example, designers work tirelessly to create designs their fans and customers will like, but the product itself will never get developed without a manufacturing partner to actually produce them. Brands like Etsy opened up the eCommerce world for designers but did little to help them with production and operations.
There are a growing number of companies trying to take that next step and provide platforms that solve logistical hurdles for entrepreneurial designers.
Ryan Kang, CEO of ROOY, a footwear creation and eCommerce platform, shares, “Many designers cannot afford high start up costs and do not know how to create the operational side of their business. Manufacturing platforms help to eliminate those costs by leveraging networks of manufacturers and by being able to make low minimum quantities.”
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Marketing can also be a challenge. Designers often understand the importance of branding and social media, but are not experts on sales and consumer behavior. Kang explains, “Even for designers that can produce their own shoes; they often run into the problem of where to market their brand. Designers are supposed to be focused on the product, so it makes sense that the rest of the business has loose ends.”
eCommerce and manufacturing platforms are paving the way forward for designers.
2. Asian market
A growing middle class in numerous Asian countries is driving significant growth in the region. Data from Transparency Market Research shows that the regional market is expected to increase by $17 billion over the next seven years. Designers looking to reach new markets can benefit from familiarizing themselves with style trends in these markets to tap into that growth.
The potential for sales amidst such growth is significant. For designers in these regions it’s important to gear up production now to match the projected increase in demand. With thriving fashion centers in Seoul and Tokyo, the potential for visibility is increased for those that can tie themselves to trends.
3. Social commerce
Everyone is aware of the importance of social media for a brand. An online poll from Civic Science found that 20 percent of consumers said social media impacts what kind of clothing and accessories they purchase. Social commerce, however, is deeper than a promoted Instagram post or an influencer giving an online review.
Consumers are not just looking for new brands — they want to learn about the brand’s development and participate in its story. This development in consumer preference has driven companies to invest in content marketing, and some of them are changing the way we perceive advertising altogether. Brands that connect the consumer to the story behind the product help establish a stronger connection to the brand. That is a unique advantage for entrepreneurial designers who, by nature, have a human story to tell that is more relatable than big box retailers. Designers need to be aware of this and capitalize on that advantage.
4. Millennials are shopping specialty
Millennials are quickly becoming the most influential consumer group. This means millennial preferences will begin to dictate the way brands behave in the market.
Marshal Cohen of NPD Group shares, “With so many retailers and brands trying to court this segment, it becomes very competitive and challenging to win share of younger Millennials’ discretionary, hard-to-come-by spending.”
Marshal’s study found that millennials prefer shopping with specialty brands for unique product offerings, dedicating 3.2 percent of their entire spending to specialty retail, compared to a more conservative 1.9 percent from older consumers. Designers seeking access to this powerful consumer group will likely find more success with smaller platforms than big box retail.
Designers that want to tap into these trends should consider what assets and experience they bring to the table to determine what partners they need to help launch their brand. For those with design expertise, but needing support with manufacturing, marketing, or eCommerce, a creation platform may be an ideal option to help get their designs into the hands of their customers. The result will be a market with fewer middlemen, bringing designers and consumers closer than they have even been before.
Source:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/285447
Is Facebook trying to lure content creators away from YouTube?
Branded content lets users monetize Facebook content including text, photos, videos, Instant Articles, links, 360-degree video and live video.
Facebook also changed the label for branded content to the more direct “paid,” but doesn’t claim that disclosure necessarily meets FTC or other regulatory standards. “Publishers will be still responsible for complying with any relevant advertising regulations in the markets, including providing necessary disclosures indicating the commercial nature of the content they post,” the blog post states.
Micro-influencers and other users with a large number of followers who didn’t make it to verified status on the platform will see the most immediate benefit, as Facebook’s move greatly democratizes the ability to earn revenue for content on the platform. The move does come at an interesting time as Google is facing serious backlash for the wild west nature of content it hosts on platforms like YouTube with brands and agencies alike pulling ads until Google can gain more control over ads appearing next to offensive or sensitive content. Giving more influencers an opportunity to earn money on Facebook could attract them away from YouTube, where reports suggest they have been losing money during the brand boycott.
Just how safe the Facebook environment is for brands is unclear. Facebook appears to be leaving it up to sponsors to make sure they aren’t paying for content that might appear next to other, potentially offensive content on the user’s profile.
Facebook’s statement on disclosure is interesting in that it put the onus on sponsors and the sponsored content to ensure the post meets standards. The FTC has not been entirely clear with its guidelines and recently has shown propensity to take action in sanctioning brands, although it’s unknown how the agency will handle enforcement under the Trump administration.
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